AUSTRIA Dollfuss & Adolf

Doll fuss & Adolf

Austria last week was like a man who begins to sniffle, wonders whether he is catching cold. In Vienna there were undeniable sniffles of Hitlerism. Under banners reading EIN VOLK--EIN REICH! ("One People--One Nation!") a crowd of 20,000 Viennese National Socialists (Nazis) gathered to cheer their leader, Herr Alfred Frauenfeld, as he roared: "Not Engelbert Dollfuss but Adolf Hitler is our Chancellor!"

On the contrary, famed "Little Dollfuss" (4 ft. 11 in.), whose friends compare him to "Little Corporal" Napoleon, was very much Chancellor of Austria last week, and doing his best to cure the Hitlerite sniffles before they should become political pneumonia. Rumors reached Vienna that some of the frontier posts dividing Austria and Germany had been pulled up in the night. Anything might happen. The fact that Chancellor Adolf Hitler of Germany is by birth an Austrian increased the danger that Austrian Nazis might be able to seize the Government, helped (according to further rumors) by 60,000 German Nazis supposed to be ready & waiting to rush into Austria.

Keeping his head, "Little Dollfuss" drafted a decree forbidding political meetings of any kind in Vienna, sent it to the City Hall. A few minutes later back came the decree with "UNCONSTITUTIONAL!" scrawled across it in the passionate autograph of Vienna's grey-bearded Socialist Burgomaster, famed Karl Seitz.

The Army, mostly recruited outside Socialist Vienna, seemed ready to obey "Little Dollfuss" and by his command two regiments marched in, planted machine guns at strategic points, massed armored motor trucks where they might soon do the most good. Burgomaster Seitz shouted: "Vienna is no city of slaves! We warn the Government of the consequences of this dictatorship!"

To qualify as a dictator, "Little Dollfuss" had sat up with his Cabinet until 1a. m., at which hour he issued a decree stating that Austria was without a parliament,* from which it followed that the Chancellor was supreme. This was confirmed by President Miklas of Austria who received "Little Dollfuss" in the wee hours, endorsed what he had done and went through the formality of refusing to accept a resignation which Dictator Dollfuss proffered, then repocketed.

Meanwhile another draft on "Little Dollfuss' " stiff neck was the rumor sweeping through Austria, that the 2O-year-old Archduke Otto von Habsburg, pretender to the throne, was either in the country or on the Swiss frontier, waiting for a call. Three newspapers were promptly suppressed for hinting at the story in print.

* Because fortnight ago the Socialist Speaker and the two Vice Speakers of the Nationalrat (the only men empowered to convene it) resigned, apparently with the idea that in view of so much Fascist agitation it would be better that the parliament should not meet. Last week Second Vice Speaker President Sepp Straffner changed his mind, ordered the parliament to convene March 15.

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